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imaginary /i’madʒin(ɘ)ri/ adjective & noun. lme. [origin Latin imaginarius, from imagin-, imago: see image noun, -ary1.] ‣ A adjective. 1 Existing only in the imagination; not real or actual. lmE.
Continue readingI’ve been making steady progress with Mr Tumnal’s story this week, and as I do the details of his curious life are firmed up in my mind. It has bothered me that I don’t know exactly how this story is…
Continue readingposed the following question recently: Is magic the defining element of fantasy? Discuss. And in reply to this defined it thus: Impossibility-within-currently-known-laws-of-nature is the defining element of fantasy, and magic is the most prominent (but not the only) presentation of…
Continue readingMy lunchtime routine is settling down nicely. I have a bit of a read whilst I eat my lunch, and then write a bit more to Mr Tumnal afterwards. I don’t get a lot written – maybe a couple of…
Continue readingToday has felt a bit like the end of term. It’s deathly quiet in the office, and I had a very nice lunch out in Little Clarendon Street (surely one of the best streets in the whole of Oxford?) with…
Continue readingThomas is physically at work in Oxford, but is mentally in Louis Tumnal’s house in Wren Hoe (a university town on the edge of the Cotswolds)…
Continue readingAs I get myself deeper into writing my new novel, I’m finding myself increasingly in the head of Louis Tumnal, who has lots of people in his head and is also the invention of a fictional person who is also…
Continue readingI’m really enjoying writing Mr Tumnal’s story. On a scale of 1-10 of wonkiness its no. 11 and some, its so completely twisted and out there it actually makes sense, and love how I am referencing and acknowledging other things…
Continue readingI’d forgotten what it is like to receive mail addressed to yourself in your own hand on the doormat. I knew exactly what the letter was going to say, even before I opened it. Sadly as regards The End of…
Continue readingAfter yesterdays uncertainty and worry I’m feeling better about my synopsis, and thus the future of my novel. I worked through the success and failures of my it with Eddie over lunch and showed it to Emma in the evening…
Continue readingSo I’ve finished the novel. I’ve revised the 100,000 words, and I’m happy with the story. I also think that I might have a title in The End of All Worlds which is better than Blood & Fire. So what’s…
Continue readingLunch felt a bit weird today. For I don’t know how long, I’ve been munching on my sandwiches and working my way through corrections—striking through redundant words and inserting new sections and inflections. Today though, I started to sum up…
Continue readingI am at the end of things; the end of words; the end of the story. This lunchtime I reached the last page of my novel, and the last paragraph. I have made my revisions, worked through my corrections. The…
Continue readingIn revising one of my closing chapters I find that I am missing an important, linking, scene in the action. How the hell did I suppose, when writing, that I could carry my readers with my protagonists from one scene…
Continue reading1. What was the first thing you ever wrote? A play for my toy theatre. Simply entitled Rome, it was of quite simply epic proportions and included the infamous first line: âSir! Sir! The Gothâs are invading!â 2. What’s your…
Continue reading~ According to the Chinese the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year is supposed to represent prosperity and wealth. ~ On the eighth day of the eighth month and the eighth year I finish revising Part…
Continue readingWhat I want to be doing, now, is making changes from my printed and well-thumbed script into my electronic version of my novel, so that I can send it off to friends and readers. But I am sleepy. I put…
Continue readingSome days are more successful than others. Today was a successful one. Sitting with my sandwiches in one hand, pen in the other, novel before me on the canteen table, I worked as usual through the pages of part five…
Continue reading…one line, of note, that has met the axe as a result of revising my novel. Now that Hannah is Kirsten, there is no need for the authorial nod to the two Hannah/Hanna Katla conundrum. Whilst the story is better…
Continue readingOkay, it’s done. For years now I have been perfectly well aware that I have been breaking the cardinal rule of writing in having two characters of (broadly similar) the same name: Hannah Ball and Hanna Katla Baldursdóttir. There have…
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